If We Close Our Eyes, The Monster Will Go Away

Refusing to face the need for radical change and adaptation only makes the eventual adjustment more traumatic and less likely to succeed.

As an initial reaction to unwelcome crises, denial serves a psychological purpose. Closing our eyes and hoping the Monster will go away is the first stage of eventual acceptance and engagement with unwelcome reality.

Clinging to denial sets up pathology, anger and collapse. If we continue to keep our eyes closed, and demand the Monster go away because we don’t want to deal with change and challenge, then we either detach ourselves from reality altogether (a pathological psychosis perfectly depicted in the classic film Sunset Boulevard) or we rage in fear and dread at the challenge/Monster, as if it is somehow unfair that change has occurred without our express permission.

The longer we close our eyes and hope the Monster will magically go away when we finally open them, the more likely our eventual collapse.

As a nation, two years after the demise of the status quo, we are still closing our eyes hoping the Monster goes away. Frequent contributor U. Doran recently sent me Hiding a Depression: How the Government Does It by Daniel Amerman, a blow-by-blow description of how Federal and state spending has expanded to replace the private-sector GDP which has vanished.